Fight Fades To Vigil

PINELLAS PARK - The feeding tube that sustained Terri Schiavo's life for 13 years was removed Wednesday, as a decade long family dispute entered its final stages under an intensifying national spotlight.

The event took place at 2 p.m. in the 39-year-old woman's bedroom at Hospice House Woodside. Outside the closely guarded facility, slogan-chanting protesters and national television news crews fought for space on the sidewalk.

Doctors predict it will take one to two weeks for Schiavo to die.

As with every other aspect of the case, the two sides - husband Michael Schiavo on one and parents Bob and Mary Schindler on the other - dispute whether Schiavo will suffer.

Shortly after the tube was removed, Michael Schiavo sent word to his in-laws that he would allow them to visit their daughter.

"She was listless, like half-asleep, half-awake," Bob Schindler said later. "She was less responsive than she's been for quite some time."

Still, Schindler held out hope that somehow his daughter will be saved from death by some last-minute miracle. Schiavo's feedings had been halted on court orders once before, for about two days in April 2001 before another judge ordered feedings resumed, Schindler recalled.

At a meeting Wednesday morning, Gov. Jeb Bush promised the couple he would keep searching for ways to intervene in what he previously acknowledged is a matter for Florida's courts.

"If there is a way to stop this from happening, we'll try to find it," Bush said after a 30-minute, closed-door meeting with the Schindlers. "If a person is able to sustain life without life support, that should be tried."

The governor was referring to the Schindlers' recent, unsuccessful attempts to get court permission to try therapy that could allow their daughter to eat normally. Last week, Bush joined in asking a federal judge to get involved in the case, and in August Bush appealed directly to Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer in a bid to help the Schindlers.

Wednesday's meeting with the Schindlers appeared to be an about-face for the governor. On Tuesday, aides said Bush had done all he could.

Bob Schindler said he did not want to divulge what he discussed with Bush. "Without going into details, he is not ready to throw in the towel," Schindler said.

Lawyer Pat Anderson, who took up the Schindlers' fight after the couple lost a January 2000 trial before Greer, said Wednesday that she was out of legal avenues to pursue.

"I've managed to buy Terri an additional 2 1/2 years of life, which is priceless. But it has not been a level playing field from the beginning," Anderson said.

Fight Began In 1993

Schiavo has been in what most doctors term a persistent vegetative state since suffering unexplained heart failure in 1990 at age 26.

The rift between husband and parents began in 1993, after Michael Schiavo won an approximately $1 million medical malpractice award for his loss and for his wife's perpetual care.

In 1998, Schiavo petitioned to remove his wife from life support. After the January 2000 nonjury trial, Greer ruled that Terri Schiavo had made statements prior to her illness indicating she would not want to be kept alive with no hope of improvement.

During the trial, and in a subsequent series of unsuccessful appeals, the Schindlers were hampered by a lack of money and access to their daughter, Anderson said.

That lack of access - Michael Schiavo strictly controls who may visit and what they may do during visits - was compounded by successive judicial decisions not to appoint an independent guardian or lawyer to represent Terri Schiavo's interests, Anderson said.

The only independent guardian Schiavo ever had, Clearwater lawyer Richard Pearse Jr., was taken off the case after filing a December 1998 report in which he recommended Schiavo not be removed from life support because Michael Schiavo stood to inherit more than $700,000 remaining in his wife's trust fund.

That money has since been spent, much of it for legal bills associated with Schiavo's more than five-year court battle with his in-laws, court records show. In the meantime, he became engaged to a woman with whom he has one child, with a second on the way.

But throughout the fight, Schiavo has consistently maintained he loves his wife and does not want her kept alive against her wishes. At one point he offered to donate the remainder of his wife's estate to charity if her parents would allow their daughter to die.

Schiavo did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

His attorney, George Felos, said Schiavo has taken time off from his job as a nurse to spend time with his wife during her final days.

New Rules Govern Visits

Under rules imposed Tuesday after the Schindlers released an unauthorized videotape they say shows their daughter reacting to them, the Schindlers may visit their daughter only when Michael Schiavo or his representative is present.

Attorneys on both sides also traded faxes Wednesday in a dispute over whether the family priest or a priest summoned by the hospice should administer last rites.

Bob Schindler said one of his daughter's childhood friends, visiting from the Philadelphia area, was turned away during an attempt to visit Wednesday.

But Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, who has been visiting Terri Schiavo on a weekly basis, was able to visit along with the Schindlers on Wednesday.

Malanowski said he administered the anointing of the sick, as he has done in the past, and also blessed Schiavo using a cloth relic that once belonged to Mother Teresa.

According to Malanowski, Mary Schindler was sad Wednesday as she kissed, caressed and hugged her daughter. "She just stared at her mother," Malanowski said of Schiavo's reaction.

To Malanowski, Schiavo seemed calm. "I don't think she'll be the same in two or three days when she's without [water] or nourishment," the priest said.

Schiavo had been receiving liquid nourishment and hydration via the feeding tube inserted into her stomach two times a day. Because the tube was removed Wednesday afternoon, the second scheduled feeding did not take place later in the day.